Point Person: Our QandA with Ron Kirk

Published: 28 May 2010 08:38 AM

Updated: 26 November 2010 02:47 PM

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk was in Beijing last week for
high-level trade talks, during which he urged China to honor
patents and copyrights and to open its markets to foreign goods and
services. But before he left for China, the former Dallas mayor sat
down with The Dallas Morning News editorial board to discuss his
first year as the nation's top trade negotiator.

What's your assessment of the United States' economic
relationship with China?

The relationship is so big. China is not too big to fail, but it
is too big to not pay attention to. The numbers are pretty
compelling. Industries are very much affected by intellectual
property rights, software piracy. Getting China and some other
countries to open up their markets and live up to promises can be
financially more compelling than negotiating an individual trade
agreement. In the case of China, we're talking about hundreds of
millions of dollars in lost economic opportunities due to copyright
piracy or being locked out of markets. It's very useful to the U.S.
to have that constant engagement.

So is it working?

They are making progress, but it is a slough. Every country
operates in its own self-interest. There are those within China who
want them to move faster, and there are those who believe that
China has learned from this economic crisis that they just can't be
export dependent, that they have to consume more of what they
produce. We think that as they do it opens up a window for us.
They've got such an extraordinary need for infrastructure that they
will have to be more receptive to exports from around the world. It
is not going to just happen overnight.

Hopefully, as they transition to a different model, it is a way
to rebalance our policy, getting back to higher savings rates,
manufacturing and selling.

How do you measure a successful trade policy?

There is a tendency for people say, well, Bill Clinton did four
trade agreements, and George W. Bush did three or seven, and you're
going to do blank, blank, blank.

My point is to take a more strategic look. Just doing deals to
do deals, I think, has led to the degradation of broad American
support and belief in trade because they didn't see a broad
strategic goal. Part of my first year has been to try to make that
step back - of how we use our resources to create broad access for
American exporters so we can maintain our economy and, hopefully,
use trade and exports as a way to create jobs.

Exports are 13 percent of our GDP and the one part of the
economy, even with our challenges, that very much punches above our
weight. From the fourth quarter of last year to now, we've flipped
our GDP from negative-6 percent to a positive-6 percent. One of the
things singularly responsible for almost half of that growth is
that our exports are growing about three times GDP.

Do Americans understand the importance of trade?

The broader challenge is what I'm spending so much of my time
on. I can go negotiate a deal to complete Panama, Korea, Colombia,
Doha. But the question is, can we restore America's faith in the
overall trade proposition?

One of the things that concerned the president and I is that we
cannot have trade become the next health care debate. Nobody is
against trade, but their list of "buts" can be so long that we
never get to the point where we have to pull the trigger. We've got
to find a way to rationalize for the American people what we are
doing and help them believe what we are doing - not only to reap
the consumer benefits of trade, but so people begin to see trade
policy as supporting our No. 1 objective, job growth.

But there is still a lot of angst about U.S. jobs going
overseas.

We haven't always been our best friends on expanding our trade
policy. In a global marketplace, there are going to be winners and
losers. I love African proverbs - "you should take no comfort from
the hole in my end of the boat." You just can't say, "Pity the poor
guys."

So has NAFTA been a winner or a loser?

Despite what people say, NAFTA has worked spectacularly well.
Our ability to compete with Asia and the rest of the world is that
we have an integrated manufacturing model in North America. Combine
our innovation and creative assets with Mexico's labor pool, and
that is what allows lots of businesses to make products in the
United States with input from Mexico and in some cases from Canada,
and then export around the world. But we haven't done a good job of
convincing people who believe that jobs just go to Mexico.

Are global economic pressures going to ignite new trade
wars?

What we are seeing are nontrade barriers - countries getting
real creative in "protecting" human health and welfare - blocking
poultry, coming up with creative licensing barriers. I wouldn't say
it is rampant, but the cumulative effect is not helpful. It puts us
in a place that even trade advocates are saying, "We're getting
killed out here."

This Q&A was conducted, edited and condensed by Dallas
Morning News editorial writer Jim Mitchell. His e-mail address is
jmitchell@dallasnews.com. Ron Kirk can be reached through
ustr.gov.

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